The outside of Francisco and Marta Agredano's temporary apartment building is seen on May 2, 2013 in San Francisco, Calif. The Agredanos are living in Parkmerced under San Francisco's Good Samaritan Tenancy after being displaced from their Capp Street home in a December fire. less

The outside of Francisco and Marta Agredano's temporary apartment building is seen on May 2, 2013 in San Francisco, Calif. The Agredanos are living in Parkmerced under San Francisco's Good Samaritan Tenancy ... more

Photo: Pete Kiehart, The Chronicle

Few landlords in program for displaced

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There is no furniture in the bare living room of the Agredanos' new apartment at Parkmerced, save for a few wooden chairs. Francisco, Marta and their four children love the security and tranquillity in the neighborhood on the southwestern edge of the city, but this is not home.

For 19 years, home was a one-bedroom unit in the Mission at 759 Capp St. until a multibuilding fire displaced 46 residents on Dec. 29. Marta Agredano says she was the only one awake that morning when she heard the screams of what she initially dismissed as a drug addict. Everyone got out safely, and the family thought it would return the same night, but the smoke and water damage had left their apartment uninhabitable.

"There were so many emotions," Marta Agredano, 45, said through an interpreter. "Where were we going to sleep, where were we going to go, where was I going to put my children? The priority was my kids."

The Agredanos are a prime example of how difficult it is for large, low-income families to stay in a city with few apartment vacancies and skyrocketing rents after their homes are damaged by fire. Having paid only $614 a month for their rent-controlled unit before the fire, the Agredanos would have been forced to leave San Francisco if not for a new but potentially underused program that allows landlords to offer temporary housing for displaced families at reduced rates.

The Good Samaritan law, enacted in 2011, is one of the tools Emergency Services Coordinator Ben Amyes uses to help families like the Agredanos. It allows landlords to offer displaced tenants temporary housing for up to two years at reduced rates without committing to long-term rent-control relationships.

Program to be reviewed

But few apartment owners have been willing to participate in the program, either because they are not aware of it or they don't want to offer a unit at a reduced rate. A hearing in June requested by Supervisor Eric Mar will review the program and the city's overall response to displaced fire victims.

"We're asking people to utilize their private property for this," said Amyes, who isn't sure what the solution is. "Is there something we can do to get people to come forward?"

Amyes works with about 25 people at any one time. He's usually on the scene at every fire where low-income tenants might need help finding a new home. Few of the families he works with had been paying more than $500 a month in rent before their fire.

While the city and Red Cross can provide short-term help, a competitive rental market has made it increasingly difficult for Amyes to find new homes for his clients.

"We started seeing more people coming out of rent-controlled situations where they had been living in a place for many years and they lose their home to a fire, and suddenly they've been outpaced by the rental market," Amyes said.

A string of arson fires in the Castro prompted Supervisor Scott Wiener to write the Good Samaritan legislation in 2011.

"This was the first of its kind in San Francisco or anywhere that has rent control," Wiener said. "I think you have landlords in a wait-and-see kind of pattern."

Providing tenant profiles

The program is run by the San Francisco Apartment Association, which sends an e-mail and tenant profiles to its membership list every time it gets word of displacements from the city. But the agency hasn't kept track of how many tenants end up using the program.

While Amyes searched for a landlord to accept the Agredanos, the family spent a month in two rooms in a Bayshore Boulevard motel paid for by the Red Cross and the city - a period they describe as horrible, mostly because of the uncertainty of their situation. The family spoke with at least seven potential landlords without success and lost money paying apartment application fees.

"The first question they would ask is if you had kids," said Francisco Agredano, 49, who is unemployed. "Then they'd say, 'Oh we'll call you back,' and they never called."

Marta Agredano, who cares for the sick as a worker for the state's In-Home Supportive Services program, said she considered moving the family to Mexico to live with her parents.

"I was so desperate, and we weren't finding a place," she said.

Parkmerced, one of the largest privately owned apartment complexes in the country, stepped in to help in February, agreeing to temporarily rent an apartment to the Agredanos for the $614 they were paying before. The complex's owners have been informally giving temporary discounted housing to displaced tenants for about 12 years and said they've taken in about a dozen using the Good Samaritan program, including others from the Capp Street fire.

Landlords want protections

Bert Polacci, the community relations director at Parkmerced, said he went to the Apartment Association board in the years before the Good Samaritan law was enacted to advocate for landlord protections for such discounted units, which typically would rent for $2,000 to $4,000 a month.

"I think there's a lot of landlords that don't know about it," he said. "Putting it out there and advertising it would be helpful."

For the Agredanos, the future remains murky. Marta said she was told their old unit would not be ready this year. They managed to save a suitcase of clothes and got a TV thanks to a warranty, but nothing else was insured. Tenants rights organization Just Cause offered the family $200 to help with expenses and furnishings, but the Agredanos turned it down and asked that it be given to the Red Cross.

"If there's other people in more need than we are, we'd rather have it go to them, because we've been placed somewhere," Marta Agredano said.

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